Recovering deleted emails from Time Machine and importing back into Apple Mail?

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Level 1

21 points

Recovering deleted emails from Time Machine and importing back into Apple Mail?

Hi all :)

I somehow managed to delete a chunk of emails in September (and as I use IMAP for all my email accounts once it was deleted off my Apple Mail client it went from the server too) ... however, I've been keeping daily backups in Time Machine and I was wondering if it's possible to extract emails from between two dates and import them back into Time Machine?

I can navigate to the /User/Library/Mail/V6 folder and find where the current emails are being stored ... but the folder hierarchy inside doesn't make any sense to me ...

Any advice on how I can proceed with recovering these lost emails from Time Machine would be much appreciated 🙂

Many thanks,

David

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Nov 1, 2019 3:03 AM

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Answer 1

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Malcolm J. Rayfield

Level 7

23,059 points

Nov 1, 2019 10:47 PM in response to Hogster86

Don't look directly in the Time Machine drive. In Time Machine system preference, enable "Show Time Machine in menu bar".

In the Mail application, go to the desired folder, then click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar and select "Enter Time Machine". Go back to the desired date, select the desired emails (or get the entire folder), and click the Restore button at the bottom. The restored emails will go to the Time Machine folder in On My Mac in Mail's sidebar. You can drag them from there to other folders.

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Answer 2

Hogster86 Author

Level 1

21 points

Nov 4, 2019 12:53 AM in response to Malcolm J. Rayfield

HUGE thank you Malcolm! 😀 I hadn't even thought of going to the Time Machine icon in the Menu Bar whilst in Mail but it worked a treat!

One very small point to note is that I had to quit and restart Mail for the Recovered Messages folder to appear (as a sub folder of 'com.apple.Mail.Backup'. But once I'd quit and restarted they were all there! 😁

Thanks again! 👍🏼

David

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Recovering deleted emails from Time Machine and importing back into Apple Mail?

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